A Wonderful Life

Geoffrey Stern: So Rabbi, we had off for the last two weeks for Hanukkah. We just lucked out. Hanukkah was from Thursday to Thursday. I hope you enjoyed the vacation as much as I did. I do have to thank two Madlik listeners, Henry and Howard, who actually reached out to me and they said, what, no notice? Where are you? We need our Madlik podcast!

Adam Mintz: Makes us feel important.

Geoffrey Stern: That’s right. So for all of you who missed us, we missed you too, and it’s wonderful to be back. I should say that during the week of Hanukkah, I lost a very favorite aunt, Adele Suslak. And since tonight we’re going to be talking about being lost, passing away, not being present, I gotta say that one of the fascinating things about this woman was that she had a tradition every, absolutely every milestone, every birthday anniversary of a very large family, she would reach out and call you, send you a text, And in the last year and a half, when she wasn’t feeling that well, what you would ultimately do on a birthday, you would say, did Adele send you a text? Did Adele call you? And I have a feeling that years going forward, we’re going to remember Adele on our birthday. And that, to me, is an irony, a delicious irony, of being present when you’re not here anymore. And that’s the kind of thing we’re going to discuss tonight. So this is for you, Adele. How are you, Rabbi?

2:40 Adam Mintz: Well, thanks. That’s really a sweet story. It’s all about your aunt. And, you know, that’s true, you know, about being present, being present when you are and being present when you’re not is really a good topic. And actually, it’s a good topic for the end of the year, like you said, because people kind of reflect on, you know, what the year was and what the year could be. So I’m looking forward to tonight’s discussion.

3:02 Geoffrey Stern: Yeah, I mean, we associate these feelings  maybe with Christmas when everybody’s celebrating, but I was having dinner with a friend during Hanukkah, and he says, you know, I kind of got depressed this week. I was thinking of all the things that I’ve done. What difference does it make? So I do think it has something to do with, on the one hand, the darkness, and on the other hand, there are celebrations going on. And so it is a unique week to talk about this. So let’s just jump into the Parsha. We’ve been gone for a few weeks, but now we’re at Joseph, Prince of Egypt.

Joseph, Prince of Egypt and the Impact of Absence

3:37 GS: His long-lost brothers have shown up. They do not yet know the relationship, who he is, and we’re in Genesis 44.18. (18) Then Judah went up to him and said, “Please, my lord, let your servant appeal to my lord, and do not be impatient with your servant, you who are the equal of Pharaoh. (19) My lord asked his servants, ‘Have you a father or another brother?’ (20) We told my lord, ‘We have an old father, and there is a child of his old age, the youngest; his full brother is dead, so that he alone is left of his mother, and his father dotes on him.’

So, you know, I’ve always talked about how amazing our scripture is, the Torah is, in creating these dramatic moments. And this is a dramatic moment. Joseph is alive. He’s talking to his brothers who don’t know who he is, and his brothers say directly to his face, our brother is dead, meaning to say, you are dead.

And so that’s what triggered my thinking about that wonderful movie called A Wonderful Life, where this guy is depressed, about to jump off a building and end his life, and this angel comes and explains to him what the world would look like if he wasn’t there. And here is this Joseph. He’s meeting his family and he hasn’t been there all these years. And it kind of creates that same kind of dynamic where you’re looking at your life and you’re not there. I mean, I was just very impressed by it.

What about you, Rabbi?

5:43 AM I mean, obviously that’s everybody’s favorite movie, especially this time of year. And I think, you know, that’s a great connection in this week’s Parsha. I think that’s something that’s great to talk about. So let’s look at the sources and let’s go.

5;57 GS Great. So Rashi is struck by the fact that Judah said his brother is dead, which is clearly a lie, at least from Rashi’s perspective. So Rashi says he uttered this untruth out of fear. He thought If I tell him that he, meaning Joseph, is alive, he may say, bring him to me. So they’re trying to excuse, and it seems like almost universally all of the sources talk about Yehuda the Tzadik. How could he possibly lie? And this is the mainstream approach of the rabbis. I need to say that in Genesis 42, a few chapters ago, again this came up, and they replied while being interrogated by Joseph, And they replied, We, your servants, were twelve brothers, son of a certain man in the land of Canaan. The youngest, however, is now with our father, and one is no more. So there they didn’t say he was dead. They used more of a euphemism that, of course, I think was more truthful. But one or the other, the point is, you wonder whether he’s lying or he is telling the truth. I mean, for all intensive purposes, is Joseph not dead to all of them? And if you sell a child as a slave, you know, Maybe you are on fair ground thinking that he probably died. It was a death sentence. But it’s fascinating that there is a challenge here.

I just love, from the perspective of Joseph looking at them and hearing this, this thing about “enenu”. He’s not here. He wasn’t here for us. He’s not here for us. He’s not a part of our life. He’s not a part of our narrative. Kind of interesting, don’t you think?

8:01 AM I would ask the following question. So what happens? They sell Joseph so they probably think that Joseph is alive somewhere, but that he’s irrelevant because he’s been sold into slavery. We don’t have to worry about him. We don’t have to think about him. He’s gone. Do you think after all of this back and forth with this viceroy of Egypt, you think that the brothers began to wonder a little bit? That’s what I want to know. You know, whether this guy is Joseph, whether Joseph is behind the scenes, like, it just seems like too many things are going wrong.

And like the things that are going wrong are the things that hit them, you know, closest, you know, closest to what matters to them. Get to feel like maybe, just maybe, they’re beginning to wonder a little bit. I don’t know. I’m just raising that as a possibility. Jacob sees the coat, so he assumes that Joseph is dead. But the brothers don’t necessarily assume.

9:11 GS I mean, you don’t even know if Judah told the other brothers what he did.

AM You have no idea. That’s what I’m pointing out. You just don’t know.

GS So of all the commentaries, I found the Maharal, who’s normally very metaphysical, Kabbalistic, but in his commentary, and he’s doing a commentary on Rashi, so it’s kind of a super commentary, He says, he puts into the brother’s mouth, we believe that he died because he set out and had a future and did not come. He didn’t come back to us. He’s never written. He’s never been in touch with us. And that is why we said that he is no longer. He adds almost a midrashic approach that when the ten siblings came to Egypt, They each entered a different gate, so that maybe they wouldn’t be identified as a tribe, as a group, so they could be like a sleeper cell. But in this interpretation, they entered from 10 gates because they were looking for their brother. And they determined, hu enenu, he’s not here. But certainly I think what we can all agree about is whether they were convinced at this point that he had died or not, it’s clear that he wasn’t a part of their life. And it’s just fascinating to think of Joseph looking upon this. All the questions, all the discussions that we’re having right now have to have been going through Joseph’s head as well.

Do they recognize me? Have they been thinking about me? Does my father believe that I’m alive? And from that perspective, I’d love to look at it from Joseph’s point of view, where it’s kind of this surreal scene where you’re looking at your life, but you’re not there. You’re looking at your family, but you’re not there, and you’re watching this dynamic. And we know ultimately, he exposes himself, but how long he drew this out to experience this kind of subject that we’re exploring today, which is how do you look at a world when you’re not there?

How do you evaluate your impact on a world? And I think that’s just – it comes out of the drama set by the text.

11:33 AM I think that’s good. I think that’s 100% right. I mean, I was pointing out also, the drama is, there are so many ways to read the drama of the text. Isn’t that what makes it so exciting?

GS Absolutely. Absolutely. So I thought, and maybe you have some more stories or insights, that I would use this as a way of looking at two famous stories from the Talmud that came to the top of my head, where it’s almost a back-to-the-future type of moment, where you get a character who gets to go, in these cases, into the future. And see the world without him, and then in a surprising, charming, delicious moment, realize that he’s made an impact. And they kind of tie into it from that perspective that I’m playing.

Honi Ha’ama’agel and the Carob Tree

12:32 So the first is about a famous guy called Honi Ha’ama’agel. Honi the Circle Maker, and what he was ultimately was a magic worker who could bring rain. He would draw a circle, and he would stand inside of the circle, he would pray to God, and at a time of drought, he had this amazing power that he was able to bring the rain. But the story that I am going to quote from Tainit 23 is where he saw a man who was planting a carob tree. And Honi said to him, this tree, after how many years will it bear fruit?

The man said to him, it will not produce fruit until 70 years have passed. Honi said to him, ìs it obvious to you that you will live seventy years that you expect to benefit from this tree? He said to him, That man himself found a world full of carob trees. Just as my ancestors planted for me, I too am planting for my descendants. So, ultimately, he was like saying, we don’t all get to harvest the fruits of our labor, but I’m harvesting the fruits of my ancestors’ labor, and they will harvest the fruits of mine.

So Honi sat and ate bread, and fell asleep and a cliff formed around him and he disappeared from sight and slept for seventy years. When he awoke he saw a certain man gathering carobs from that tree. Honi said to him, Are you the one who planted this tree? The man said to him, I am his son’s son. Honi said to him, I can learn from this that I have slept for seventy years, and indeed he saw that his donkey had sired several herds during these many years. Honi went home and said to the members of the household, Is the son of Honi Hamagel alive?

They said to him, His son is no longer with us, but his son’s son is alive. He said to them, I am Honi Hamagel. They did not believe him. He went to the study hall, where he heard the sages say about one scholar, His halakhot are as enlightening and as clear as in the days of Honi Hama’agel. For when Honi Hama’agel would enter the study hall, he would resolve for the sages many difficulties that they had. Honi said to them, I am he. But they did not believe him and did not pay him proper respect. Honi became very upset, prayed for mercy, and died. Rava said this explains the folks saying that people said either friendship or death, as one who has no friends is better off dead.

Wow, what a powerful Story!

15:34 AM That’s amazing.

GS I mean, at so many different levels.

AM There are so many things, what’s it about?

GS Well, I mean, I think at the most basic level, it is that lesson that we plant and others harvest, and we harvest that which previous generations planted. But it also talks about the worlds that we want to be a part of You know, if we’re talking about mortality, When it is a time for people to be harvesting that which we planted, maybe that’s not a time that we are still alive. I mean, I think it’s just fascinating that no one knew who he was, even though he was recognized and quoted, and “either friendship or death”.

He who has no friends is better off dead. Just kind of, and it’s interesting in terms of, I mean, the magic of it, obviously, the fact that it associates sleep with death. We know from the Talmud that sleep is 160th of death and that every morning when we wake up, It’s like we’re being reborn, which is a beautiful metaphor, too. Obviously, sleep is a time of dreams, and Joseph has given us enough dreams in the last few weeks for us to understand. So it’s all of these things combined, but I think it’s just kind of beautiful in terms of putting a kind of a context of what it means to have an impact on the world, what it is to be part of a world, and what also it means to have the world go on without you.

17:20 AM I like that last point. What does it mean to have the world go on without you? Right? That’s a pretty that’s a pretty powerful idea, isn’t it? That the world went on. There? It you know he was he was done and the world went on. That’s a very striking idea to me.

GS It does, I think, resonate a little bit with the Joseph story in that he wasn’t recognized. Here Honi comes and it’s future generations and he’s not recognized. But he is quoted. He’s part of the narrative, but he’s not quite part of the narrative. I find that fascinating. And then just this sense of him trying to get an answer to a question. I mean, the whole thing begins because Honi has a question. He asks the carob planter a question, and then this magical moment happens that puts him to sleep and lets him go into the future.

You know, when I was thinking about Talmudic stories, Midrashic stories, where you would go into the past, all of them, and they have many, where people, Elijah will go visit maybe Abraham and Sarah in Kevah HaMachpelah, but they’re kind of in heaven. You know, it’s an otherworldly thing. Here, you really have that back-to-the-future type of dynamic, where he’s not going to another world. He’s staying within this world. He’s being fast-forwarded, but he gets enlightened, and he gets an exposure that, you know, none of us can get unless we’re dreaming, unless we’re sleeping, unless we’re imagining.

19:12 AM So, you know, let’s just go back to Joseph for a minute. The idea of dreams, right? You know, all these parshiot that we’re studying are all the parshiot of dreams, and every dream is fulfilled. Pharaoh’s dream is fulfilled, and the, you know, and the butler’s dreams are fulfilled. The only dream that’s not fulfilled is actually Joseph’s dream. And you just wonder about that, that maybe all the story that we read this week about the brothers coming is all a fulfillment of Joseph’s dream that his father and his brothers will come and bow down before him.

So you talk about Honi HaMa’agel, you talk about fulfilling dreams. Maybe that’s what we learn from the Torah, all about fulfilling dreams.

19:57 GS And the dream somehow enables you to see the world from the outside, to have a totally different perspective on your interaction with the world. You’re kind of floating above it. You’re a part of it, but you’re not a part of it. It’s just, I love the playfulness also of it.

So the other famous story that came to mind was Moses goes up to Sinai, and he sees God adding these tale’ tagin, these crowns on the letters. And any of you who have looked at— You know,

AM We still have the crowns on the letters, of course.

GS We do, if any of you have seen a Sefer Torah and if you haven’t, get yourself an Aliyah and go up there and you’ll see that on top of the letters there were these beautiful calligraphic crowns. Moses says, master of the universe, he goes, what’s the purpose of these crowns? And God says, there is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name. He is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crown mounds upon mounds of halachot. And so, the beautiful story then has Moses fast-forwarded in a time capsule to the Talmudic Academy of Akiba, and they put him in the eighth row because he’s not the smartest of the students.

That’s where the new students sit. He sat at the end of the eighth row in Akiva’s study and did not understand what they were saying. So unlike Hani, where Hani was in his prime and they were quoting him, here there’s a little bit more drama. Moses is dumbfounded. He doesn’t have a clue what Akiva’s talking about. Moses’ strength waned as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient. When Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him, My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them, It is a halacha LeMoshe M’Sinai It is a law that was transmitted from Moses at Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this, too, was part of the Torah that he was to receive.” So here, again, you have, like Choni, going into the future. But unlike Choni, he’s not the master of the universe. He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. He feels as though he hasn’t made his mark. He is nothing. And then, in this magical moment, Akiva’s asked, how do you know this? And he says, it’s a halacha from Moses at Sinai.

And it reminds me, there was a great movie with Harrison Ford [Regarding Henry]. This big time lawyer goes out to buy a pack of cigarettes, he gets shot in the head, and he obviously is recuperating, he loses all of his mental acuity, and he’s sitting a year or two later into his rehabilitation with his daughter, and she’s reading him a book, and he’s looking at her in absolute awe, and he says to his daughter, how do you know how to read? And she says, dad, you taught me how to read…. So, it’s this ability to make an impact on the world when we don’t even realize it.

It’s an ability to give other people the tools and the capacity for them to go beyond us. And I think that that makes this so special.

AM Is that the ultimate humility? Is that what it’s about? Is it about Humility?

23:50 GS Humility? Well, I mean, I think on the one hand, it’s humility to understand that you don’t have all the answers, and the carob tree doesn’t end with you. But on the other hand, it’s amazing sense of appreciation that what we create goes beyond us, and that there are others who will take it further.

AM Humility, isn’t it? Absolutely.

24:14 GS So I just found those two stories to be quite amazing. The other story that doesn’t come from the Talmudic or the Midrashic period is by a favorite book of mine by Agnon, and it’s called The Crooked Shall Be Made Straight. I’ve quoted this story before, but basically it’s of a nebuch, of a loser of a husband who can’t make a living and he leaves his wife and he becomes a beggar. To be able to beg, he gets a letter from a great rabbi who says, yeah, you can give this guy money. And one night, he’s such a loser, he can’t make ends meet, he’s at a bar, and the guy says, I’ll give you two drinks if you give me that letter. And he gives the guy the letter, and then two days later, the guy is dead. He dies, and he has the letter in his pocket. And to make a long story short, his wife back home gets word that her husband has died. She gets remarried.

The nebuch husband comes back to the town one morning to say, I just have to come home, see my wife. She’s going to greet me. But everybody’s going to a festivity and they’re going to the Brit of his wife’s son from the new husband. And if he is alive, that child is a mamzer, is a bastard.

And so you have this irony of him having to be, to do the last good thing that he can do in his life is to be legally dead. And it’s this fascinating thing about, again, watching your life go on without you and knowing that maybe the greatest contribution that you can make is not to be there. And I just found the irony of it so fascinating and of course, Agnon as always is bringing verses, and he’s a lot to do with Jacob, but you can’t help but think of this, where here Joseph is in a similar situation, where the fact that he’s not alive permits certain things, lets them divulge (and process) certain things.

I just think the dialectic is kind of so, so fascinating. And it just gives you an insight, I think, not only to the playfulness of the rabbis and Agnon, our authors, but this sense of, and it’s not, you know, one of the things that struck me is none of these have to do with death, life after death, and this spiritual type of thing. It has more to do with What is the world with us? What is the world like without us? This week I fulfilled a task (mission) that my dad wanted me to do. I finished selling the property that he wanted me to sell. And I just felt he was looking at me, and I had finished my shlichut, he had asked me to do something, and I did it. We plant the carob tree, we harvest the carob tree, it’s something that, it has a spiritual sense to it, but it also has, I don’t know, a familial, a different sense to it, and I just feel it very strongly this time of year where we’re looking at connections and who we are and who we’re not.

27:48 AM So I think that’s beautiful, all of these examples that you give and then you connect it to, you know, to your father. The idea of being present, it all goes back to the story you told about your aunt, right? The idea of being present when you’re not here anymore is a very strong idea. I’m jumping one parasha. But the Rashi says on next week’s parasha, when Jacob dies, Rashi says, Yakov, avinu lo meyt, that Jacob, our father, didn’t die. Because it doesn’t actually say he died. It says he curled up, but it doesn’t actually say he died.

Jacob continues. He’s always kind of there. You know, Elijah the prophet also doesn’t die. Elijah the prophet is there every Saturday night when we make Havdala. Elijah’s there in a Brit. There’s an idea that you’re present even when you’re no longer present. And the story you told about Moshe in the back of the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Akiva, not only are you present after you’re no longer alive, but you’re important when you’re no longer alive. That’s what that story adds for us, right?

That without you, we wouldn’t understand anything. That’s amazing!

29:03 GS So I started by saying this time of year, some of us get a little, I don’t know, whimsical, maybe a little, even tinge of depression, and we ask, what is our purpose in this world? But I said, in this time of our lives that we’re in a war, and young people are being killed before their time. And you can’t help but ask, along with their parents, along with all of Israel, what would have been had they lived? What mark would they have made? What were they robbed of? So there’s an amazing podcast by Daniel Gordis, and what he does is to bring stuff from the Israeli media that we might not necessarily see.

And in this week’s episode, he brings a will written by a soldier who was killed. And I want to end by reading that.

The family of Sergeant Shay Arvas, z’’l, who served as a combat medic in the Givati Tzabar Battalion and who fell in October in the armored personnel carrier incident in the northern Gaza Strip, received his personal belongings this week, including a “will” he wrote on his phone two weeks before his death. “Just in case…”, is how his last letter opens, the last letter he left, detailing his love for the country, his belief in the cause and his request to his family to continue their lives and be happy.

To my beloved Adar, my dear mother, the best father in the world and all my brothers, Chen and Tami Ray and Amiri, Or and Niv, Ran and Moriah, Emily and Ari and Tal and Stav and the immediate family. I want you to know how much I miss you and I love you, and the truth is that I was happy to do what I do to save people and protect the country because it’s something I always wanted. Something that has always been a part of me since I was little and now I had the opportunity to do it and give of myself to the country as well. So you know that all this was not for nothing and was worth it. All the people of Israel will continue this tradition, and love the country because people didn’t just die here for nothing, and there are people who have to protect it.

The family of Sergeant Shay Arvas, z’’l, who served as a combat medic in the Givati Tzabar Battalion and who fell in October in the armored personnel carrier incident in the northern Gaza Strip, received his personal belongings this week, including a “will” he wrote on his phone two weeks before his death. “Just in case…”, is how his last letter opens, the last letter he left, detailing his love for the country, his belief in the cause and his request to his family to continue their lives and be happy.

To my beloved Adar, my dear mother, the best father in the world and all my brothers, Chen and Tami Ray and Amiri, Or and Niv, Ran and Moriah, Emily and Ari and Tal and Stav and the immediate family. I want you to know how much I miss you and I love you, and the truth is that I was happy to do what I do to save people and protect the country because it’s something I always wanted. Something that has always been a part of me since I was little and now I had the opportunity to do it and give of myself to the country as well. So you know that all this was not for nothing and was worth it. All the people of Israel will continue this tradition, and love the country because people didn’t just die here for nothing, and there are people who have to protect it.

And all I could think about when I read this was the end of Private Ryan, where they spent so much precious life to find this Private Ryan and to spare his life.

And as the head of the battalion (Tom Hankes) is dying in his arms, he says to him, “Earn this. Just earn it”.

And in a sense, I think what this sergeant is saying, that he says he’s not dying in vain because he did what he wanted to do, protect us. But now his family, his country, his people have to go on living, but in a sense, they have to earn it. His absence, it’s the opposite of maybe A Wonderful Life where he’s shown, had he not been there, look what would have not happened. Here, this young soldier at the beginning of his life is lost.

And his absence has to drive everybody in the family and everybody in the country that he protected to be more, to be better, to be united, to love. Anyway, that’s what I took from it.

AM Thank you so much for sharing that. I had read it also and it’s just so – there are no words. You can’t really say anything. But this was an amazing topic. It’s a great way to – we’re still going to have one more this year because next Thursday night is still this year. But it’s a good – it’s really something to think about at the end of the year and I hope that everybody will enjoy Shabbat and the parsha. And our hearts and our thoughts are with everybody in Israel, and we hope, please, God, to share good news next week.

This week was amazing. I can only wait to see what next week is going to bring us in terms of the class. Shabbat Shalom.

34: 29 GS Shabbat Shalom. It is a wonderful life, but that is both something to cherish and something to be challenged by. So let us do both and try to be better because of it. Shabbat Shalom.